1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a file management program, and more particularly to a file management program which manages image files.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, image data taken with a digital camera is incorporated into a personal computer and managed with the personal computer. However, a problem has existed in that the management of image data becomes more difficult as the amount thereof that is incorporated into the personal computer increases, and thus users are no longer able to readily find the image they wish to view.
To solve this problem, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2003-199028 discloses an electronic album device that, when managing image data, stores the image data after automatically classifying the data by predetermined categories (such as time stamp, date, image taking conditions, resolution, form, etc.) that are based on fundamental attributes of the image data. However, since the electronic album device merely classifies image data by categories such as time stamp, the problem arises that there may be little difference among images in the classification categories, or the images in the same classification may be irrelevant to each other. For example, the relation between classification by time and classification by date is that the classification by time subdivides the classification by date into smaller categories, constituting a drawback in that the classification becomes merely an inclusion relation of a set. Further, for classification by file volume or resolution, images taken at completely different dates or events are classified into the same category, constituting a drawback in that the relationship among images in the respective categories is reduced.